-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Pope Benedict XVI 's resignation captured the world 's attention , and rightly .

It is the first papal resignation in nearly six centuries . The pope leads a church that includes a sixth of the world 's population . His gravitas reverberates outside Roman Catholicism : The pope talks and people listen .

Others are fascinated by Vatican spectacle . Benedict speaks Latin and wears gold vestments . His successor 's election by conclave , with sequestering and smoke , is high drama .

But for all the excitement and ceremony , the pope is not the most important thing about Catholicism .

For all his influence , the pope makes up an infinitesimal fraction of the opinions and activities of Catholics .

The most important thing about Catholicism is the 1 billion who claim it as their faith .

In the wake of updating by the Second Vatican Council , Roman bishops emphasized the role of the laity . Lay activism exploded . Many Catholic theologians stressed the whole community of Catholics working together .

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The issue is not only what the Church should look like . We should be concerned about media and popular takes on what Catholicism does look like . News coverage of the Church is usually about the hierarchy . Ask average Americans about Catholicism and they likely will mention the pope .

This happened for several reasons .

No other big religious institution is so centralized . The media covers the pope as Catholicism because it is easy to cover the pope as Catholicism . Place a correspondent in Rome or even just use Vatican press releases . There is no highest authority of Hinduism . There is no international imam of Islam .

Also , despite the Vatican II council of the 1960s , popes kept expanding their authority . Benedict XVI endorsed that council but read tradition to support papal sovereignty . If popular opinion overwhelmingly associates Catholicism with the papacy , that 's partly because effective Vatican theologizing made it so .

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Finally , the U.S. has always had an obsession with the pope .

Ironically , this obsession had roots in anti-Catholicism . Americans `` used '' the pope as a way to sharpen national identity . American democracy was contrasted with papal demagoguery , American piety with papal superstition , American modernity with papal obsolescence .

U.S. Roman Catholics felt pulled between nation and church . Scholars have noted that American faithful were more pope-identified than coreligionists around the world , as if overcompensating to hold the two sides together .

But obsession involves both attraction and loathing . Even ardent anti-Catholics seemed consumed with fascination for the pontiff . The infamous publisher of anti-Catholic comics , Jack Chick depicts decadent popes lofting ominous speech bubbles , precisely capitalizing on the fact that such scenes make gripping graphic art . It 's as if the pope â $ '' with absolute rule , a throne , pomp and circumstance â $ '' taps into a repressed fantasy of crowns and ermine .

Perhaps pop god Prince put it best :

So U can be the President

I 'd rather be the Pope

Yeah , U can be the side effect

I 'd rather be the dope

Arguably Prince is right ; the pope is bigger than the president .

But the pope is not the dope . At least not for purposes of best analyzing Catholicism . While the popes have attempted to maintain the status quo from the top down , three major phenomena are happening in the Church from the ground up -- and the media would be well advised to pay attention .

First , vernacular religion . This refers to religion as it is actually lived , rather than how leaders say it should be lived . A term coined by Leonard Primiano of Cabrini College , vernacular religion highlights that while clerics write creeds and command pulpits , official religion is the tip of the iceberg of religious culture .

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This became visible in coverage of bishops ' activism against President Obama 's health care law provisions for artificial birth control . The bishops held the official position that artificial birth control was morally wrong . Most news accounts added that a majority of U.S. Catholic women used it anyway . This addition was a start , but it needs to go further . According to doctrine , women were `` going against '' their Church . But in terms of vernacular religion , their everyday Catholicism was simply different from the approved version .

Second , other Catholics . Last year a Religion Dispatches blog headline read , `` Will the Catholic Church Split ? ''

As several noted in the comments , Catholicism has already split . Catholicism is actually not one structurally unified body â $ '' and has n't been since 1054 . The Orthodox churches are Catholic , the biggest headed by the Patriarch of Constantinople . The Anglican Communion -LRB- including the U.S. Episcopal Church -RRB- identifies as both Catholic and Protestant , headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury . The Old Catholic churches of Europe formed in the late 19th century as harbor for Catholics who rejected papal infallibility ; they are in communion with Anglicanism .

In the United States at least 200 separate small Catholic churches and clergy associations exist , often with their own bishops . Some are CORPUS , a corps of married priests who celebrate the sacraments ; Roman Catholic Womenpriests , who like many others are ordaining women ; and the Ecumenical Catholic Communion , which has partnered with the other two groups .

Third , flows . Some people live in several Catholic worlds . In the United States , a Catholic woman might attend a Roman parish , work for Catholic Charities , serve as an independent Catholic priest , officiate weddings for divorced Romans on weekends and do Buddhist meditation every morning , too .

What would it mean to account for vernacular Catholicism ? Non-Roman Catholics ? Flows between Rome and other institutions ?

Understanding one of the world 's most populous faiths needs to encompass all of Catholicism -- not just the Roman version .

And certainly not just the pope .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julie Byrne .

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Julie Byrne : Pope Benedict XVI 's resignation rightly drew enormous world attention

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She says often media focus on the pope as entirety of Catholic Church

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While pope commands attention , lay groups have become increasingly important , she says

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Byrne : Church is split over many issues ; Vatican doctrine is only part of the story